He didn't say anything, just drove the quarter of a mile toward the highway on-ramp in silence. I made it mostly to The Dalles before I broke.
"I didn't know anyone wanted to kill me when I made you leave me alone."
"I smelled fae," he said neutrally--the sneak. That was why he'd kissed my knuckles.
"She jumped me in the changing room," I told him reluctantly. I'd known after the doorknob hit my eye that I wasn't going to be able to hide the fight from Adam. Not that I'd really been planning on keeping the attack secret; it had just been an option I'd wanted to keep open if I could. "I think it was one of the otterkin--and she was the weird lady from lunch the day before yesterday."
"Did you leave the body?" he asked.
"No body," I told him. "I wasn't trying to kill her. And once I got rid of the knife, I was pretty sure she couldn't kill me. She wasn't any stronger than a normal human." I thought a moment. "I don't think so, anyway. As soon as the clerk came in, she glamoured back to otterkin and left through the ceiling. She might have used magic to get up there, but otters are pretty agile."
He squeezed his nose. Then he laughed. "I guess you proved your point," he told me. "You can take care of yourself."
"I wonder why the otterkin are trying to kill me?" I said.
"I don't think that we'll call in the fae to help us against the river devil," said Adam. "I think the chances are that they may come down on the wrong side."
"You were thinking of asking the fae for help?" I squeaked. Help was even worse than a favor.
He gave me an exasperated look. "I said I wasn't."
"It sounded like you might have been before I was attacked."
"You're trying to distract me," he said. "You don't need to. I'm not going to yell at you because you were attacked--especially since you won the fight."
"She ran away," I said.
"Without accomplishing her purpose. That's losing in my book. Especially since you got rid of her knife before she stuck it in you."
I gave him a wary look, but he honestly didn't appear upset.
"Mercy," he said, "in a fair fight between near equals, I'll back you every time. It's the demons, vampires, and river devils I worry about, and I'm working on that."
I could live with that if he could.
10
UNLIKE THE MARYHILL MUSEUM OR SHE WHO WATCHES, Stonehenge was a place I had been to many times over the years. It's right on the way to my mom's house in Portland. Sam Hill had been told that the henge at Salisbury had been used for human sacrifice and decided that it was a fitting memorial for the men who were sacrificed in World War I.
Adam and I parked the truck next to a deserted orchard down by the river and walked over hill and dale to the high place where Sam Hill's conceit looked out over the gorge.
I never could decide if Stonehenge was beautiful, spiritual, or merely a roadside oddity. Certainly it was impressive--a massive exact- sized replica cast in concrete of a place half a world away.
The original Stonehenge took about sixteen hundred years to build. The one at Maryhill took a little more than ten years to complete. It is a monument to commemorate thirteen young men of Klickitat County who died in a war nearly a hundred years ago, a silent testament of a man who knew how to dream big, and, I'd been told, a magical collection site of great power to those who knew how to access it.
I'd always taken that last bit with a grain of salt. After all, I'd have thought a powerful place would have attracted witches or something nastier (and there is not a whole lot nastier than a black witch), and in all the years I'd been visiting, I'd never seen anything dangerous. The other reason I'd doubted was because I am pretty good at sensing magic--and it had never felt any more magical than my garage.
In the night, it was different.
The minute my foot landed on the flattened area around the monument, I could feel the pulse of magic under my feet. Adam sensed it, too-- though werewolves don't usually feel magic other than their own. He lifted his head and took a deep breath.
"I thought this was an awfully public place to be meeting," I told Adam. "You can see up here from all the way over the river on the main highway. Suddenly, though, Coyote's desire to meet here makes better sense. I've heard talk of ley lines since before I could walk--Bran might be a werewolf, but he understands the working of magic even if he doesn't do witchcraft or wizardry himself."
I paused, frowning. "I don't think he does, anyway. I've been here a lot over the years, and this is the first time I've ever felt magic."
"Ley lines?" said Adam. "I can feel something." He closed his eyes and breathed in, as if trying to pick up that little bit more that isolating his senses might give him. "Ley lines, huh? Feels like someone stroking my hair in the wrong direction."
"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I asked.